The concept of liberalism is a funny thing right now. ML's tend to use the term to refer to anyone who isn't a Communist or a reactionary, or as say, Mao used it, meaning any joker who eschews revolutionary politics in favor of unprincipled peace (significant overlap) +

And honestly the global domination of liberalism was so absolute for so long you could almost forgive someone for mistaking it for a natural order. One of the 'benefits' of status quo is that you suddenly don't have to really explain anything, it's just the way it is. +

But it actually is a codified ideology with it's own theories of power and political economy that had a long history of development breaking down the mercantilism that filled the void left by the falling feudal order and its historical development as an ideology and +

eventual fully dominant social order is important to understand and can also put into perspective the kind of time frame revolutionaries should be thinking in, re: smashing capitalism, liberal democracy, establishing a DotP and building a socialist civil order. +

I highly recommend you read Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan," John Locke's "Two Treatises" and Adam Smith's "The Wealth Of Nations." There's obviously a lot of liberal theory out there, but these are the foundational texts. +

Truly, if you can even name all three, you're ahead of probably 75% of Actually Existing Liberals. If you read all three it probably jumps to 98%. You'll seem psychic to them. +

A more practical book to read is Gould's "The Origins of Liberal Dominance." It's not theory or a Marxist work but nonetheless and thorough and reasoned history of the rise and success of the liberal order as a time line but also details successful and failed lib. revolutions +

Up until where we are today. A very interesting read for anyone who, say, might wish to replicate that success but for opposite and noble reasons.

Cont.: a funny thing to note, when I was growing up, "conservative" and "liberal" were the only two words used to describe political view points and it seemed like the definition of liberal was always "anything that ISNT conservative," +

Of course implying conservatism as the human's natural state of being. But the way the founder of the National Review put it, a conservative's job was "to stand athwart history shouting 'Stop!'" and when you look at it that way, a conservative is just yesteryear's liberal; +

A person hesitant to condone changes to the social order out of a desire to preserve their place in the social hierarchy where as the liberal, ever the careerist, seeks their own advancement. The concept of a 'reactionary', someone who actively seeks to undo social progress +

Wouldn't enter my world view until I was about 16 or so and saw the backlash to Obama that genuinely baffles me. Now instead of liberals and conservatives, we have conservatives we call liberals and reactionaries. Nothing to add here, just reminding you stuff sucks.